12 Days of Jerza
by thir13enth
Summary: a jerza holiday special comprised of art and drabbles — because what better way to celebrate?
1. sunrise

**notes:** this is part of a special holiday series, dubbed "12 Days of Jerza" that **wordslinger** and i are doing for the holiday season! it's both a fanfiction and a fanart collaboration so in order to get both the text and the art, i _highly recommend_ either finding this story on my ao3 (i'm also **thir13enth** there) or going to the tumblr blog **12daysofjerza** so that you can the full experience!

* * *

 **sunrise**

summary: first winter, then spring.  
prompt: long night

.

The moon ate the sun hours ago — wrapping the night around the last of the sunlight and smothering it to an empty black sky — but his eyes are still wide awake as he thinks about how he hasn't seen her smile in ages.

It's been over a few years since Tenrou Island disappeared, or at least since he's been informed.

But truth be told, he knew she was gone the moment his heart stopped beating.

He supposes this is how he should be punished for having lost his mind in the first place, looking for heaven so high upwards in the sky when he was too naïve to realize that love was sitting right next to him, holding his hand. He counts the days by the empty strum of his still heart, because someday his beat will join hers once again, as he now realizes it should be and should have always remained.

Sometimes someday is the same as never, but he thinks that as long as the sun rises the next day, he is at least a little closer to forever.

Until then, he keeps his hand close to his heart, where not even the longest nights or the coldest winters or the darkest nightmares can touch.

He waits out the snow, waits out the ice — patiently anticipating the first blossom of his spring to bloom in the grace of the rising sun, resisting the angry bites of frost crawling toward him from the tips of his toes and the ends of his fingers.

And then seven years later, he awakens one day to the warm sunlight resting on his skin like fine dust. He turns his gaze to the scarlet red sky surrounding the brilliant golden sun, and he knows that somewhere between the clouds, he can see same silver light behind that she carries in her eyes.

He sees her smile — and it's as if he never closed his eyes.

* * *

 **thir13enth**


	2. daylight savings

**daylight savings**

summary: time is of the essence.  
prompt: winter solstice

.

He wants this night to last forever.

Today, he arrives unexpected but she isn't surprised.

She never is. She's always been waiting for him.

When his strong arms encircle her waist and his lips lower to the base of her neck, she breathes in and lifts her head up toward him to see the shadow of his smile.

He smells like too many days too far and whatever traces of blood came with the passing nights, and he smells like something between longing and forgiveness and between regret and promises.

But she — she smells like _home_.

"How'd you get in?" she croons into his skin, pressing soft kisses into his warmth. He loves how her simple touch can make his pulse quicken.

"As I always do," he whispers.

She softly snorts. "You know you wouldn't be able to let yourself in if I kept my windows shut."

"Ah, I see you've discovered my secret. I suppose I'm not so magical after all, now am I?"

At the word, her smile flattens. "How long are you staying?" she asks.

His embrace tightens around her. He can't lie to her.

"Just until sunrise," so he says.

And at this, the night quiets to the sound of their breath.

There's a moment where he can't tell what she's thinking — whether she's going to ask why things have to be the way they are, why he has to continue fighting other people's wars when he's already served his time in hell, why she has to go through her days waiting for him to come back to her, why everyone else _but the two of them_ can have their time together, even after everything was said and done.

This is the moment that he comes back to every time he returns to her, and this is the moment that he fears. He's promised her so much in the past and he still hasn't been able to deliver. She's been waiting for long enough — for longer than he had all those seven years those many years ago — and still even now, the furthest he has come is telling her he loves her, and only _telling_ her so.

He never has the time. He never _had_ the time, and he _still_ doesn't have the time. If today, she wanted to be mad at him and if today, she wanted to cry, he would repentfully accept it because he deserved —

"Do you know what today is?" she asks him softly.

He lets out a held breath, thinks hard about what is on her mind.

He doesn't reach an answer. "I don't know."

She tilts her head up to him. "It's the winter solstice," she tells him, with the faintest smile on her lips. "Do you know what that means?"

"The shortest day," he replies, and then blurts apologies. "Erza, I'm sorry. I know our time together is always so short."

He takes a pause, watches her. Her mouth parts, but she doesn't say a word.

"I'm sorry," he continues. "I know I told you that we'd be together after Zeref was defeated and after the Dragons were all sent back to their original time, and that _this_ is not how you imagined our time together to be — you alone all the time and me away all the time, and that we only get these short _short_ days to spend with each other —"

"The winter solstice…" she interrupts, putting a finger gently on his lips. "…is the _longest night_."

She slowly stands up, rotating to face him from the front. She places both hands onto his chest and smooths the wrinkles of his inner armor before her eyes flicker up to meet his.

"You said you're here until sunrise," she continues, her hands sliding down his torso and circling around the hem of his pants.

She leans in, a mischievous light in her eyes and a smirk on her lips. Her fingers stop at the buckle.

"I plan to make every minute _count_."

* * *

 **thir13enth**


	3. naughty or nice

**naughty or nice**

summary: check that list twice.  
prompt: cookies and milk

.

Even after a grand Christmas Eve dinner that included plenty of dessert, Erza was sad to say that she was still starving.

So after the third rumble of her belly post-meal, Erza got out of bed, padding her way across the carpet toward the door as quietly as she could. Once at the doorframe, she swiveled around to check on Jellal, her heart warming at seeing the steady rise and fall of the blankets and covers surrounding his sleeping body.

To not wake him during her quick nighttime food raid, she slowly turned the doorknob until the first soft click and then swung open the door. Some of the holiday lights from the hallway spilled into the dark bedroom, but before the colors could interrupt her husband's slumber, she quickly closes the door as gently as she can, only leaving it a crack open and scuttles down the hallway.

On her way to the kitchen, she made a mental list of what fast and easy leftovers there were in the refrigerator, heavily considering to not even reheat some of the food in lieu of shutting her stomach up as soon as possible. But once she reached the living room, she remembered that there in fact _were_ some fast and easy foods already ready to eat — and they were resting on a special plate next to a tall glass of milk right next to the Christmas tree.

"Score," she muttered under her breath, practically skipping toward the cookies.

Chocolate chip, if she remembered correctly. Jellal and the kids had baked them earlier today while she was covering a shift in the emergency room.

She couldn't possibly just let their time and effort go to waste, she thought. And she worked a long and tiring twelve-hour shift from seven in the morning to seven at night so she totally deserved extra dessert, she thought.

Without hesitation, she takes a cookie and stuffs half of it into her mouth.

And geez, she hoped that her kids would pick up Jellal's baking skills — because the cookies were exactly perfect, with crisp edges and a chewy middle, not too sweet and not too plain, bittersweet chunks of chocolate just on the verge of melting.

She licks the melted chocolate off her fingertips and grabs another cookie —

"Santa?!"

Erza swiveled around — her hands freezing, half-eaten cookie still in her mouth.

Shit.

But she sighed in relief when she saw her husband standing behind her, not in fact, her eight-year-old daughter or her five-year-old son.

She pulled the cookie out of her mouth, relaxing. "Jellal," she admonished him. "You scared me."

Jellal continued to stare at her with astonished eyes. "Erza?!" he softly exclaimed. "Does this mean that Santa doesn't exist?"

Erza rolled her eyes, and as she sat back onto the carpet, taking another cookie in her hand, Jellal came forward to join her next to the Christmas tree. He sits behind her, leaning her back into his chest and between his legs. She offers him a cookie.

"How could you? Those are for Santa," he continued to tease her.

"You know, at some point we're going to have to tell the kids," she reminded him, withdrawing the cookie she extended toward him and placing it into her own mouth.

"You're terrible," he snorted, with a small laugh. He leaned in. " _Naughty_ ," he whispered in her ear, wrapping his arms around her waist.

Her eyes narrowed and her right eyebrow raised. She turned her head to glare pointedly at him.

"Well, at least _my_ hands aren't anywhere they _shouldn't_ be," she accused, gesturing towards his hand traveling down her inner thigh.

* * *

 **thir13enth**


	4. with me

**with me**

summary: with you, now and forever.  
prompt: sweaters and scarves

.

It's only five minutes after they step outside into the snow when Erza begins to unravel.

"Ah!" she exclaims, in a somewhat of a subdued yelp.

She raises her hands to the tops of her shoulders, trying to catch the falling loops of her scarf that are slowly escaping her neck. Her mittens betray her, however, and so when her scarf falls to a clump upon the fresh snow, she squats down to pick it back up — the only way to reach down with her bulky overcoat. But then the pink knitted hat with a large white pom-pom on top of her head falls forward, and in trying to keep that in place, she ends up stumbling backwards seat first right into the snow.

Her pout is unmistakable.

He can't help the smile that breaks over his lips. He offers her a hand up — one she begrudgingly takes — and pulls her back to standing.

"You okay there?" he teases, bending over to grab her scarf off the ground. Fortunately not much snow has gotten onto the fabric yet, and Jellal quickly brushes the white powder off before it melts and turns wet and cold.

"Just fine," she mutters grumpily. She rubs her backside vigorously, trying to get the snow off the back of her pants and coat.

He laughs softly, handing her scarf back.

She takes it and quickly tries to fix herself back up. He watches her sloppily circle the scarf around her head, a little too tight around the neck and a little too loose around the shoulders.

Within seconds, everything falls apart again.

He laughs again. She's never been able to quite get it right.

"You know," he says, taking the scarf to readjust it and draping it over her head. "For all the times that you've fixed my tie, I would have thought you'd be much better at keeping things around your neck."

"Scarves are completely different from ties," she retorts.

He gives her a pondering smile, considering her point. "Sure, sure," he tells her, looking back down to fix the scarf. He makes sure the ends are even, smoothing it out before he recognizes the heart-like pattern stitched onto it, and then looks back up at her.

"This looks my armor," he muses.

"Well," she admits. "I made this scarf last year." She gives him a guilty smile. "I missed you."

"I'm sorry," he murmurs. Apologies are almost an automatic reflex.

"Don't be," she tells him. "None of that was your fault. We weren't ready."

He frowns. "Still," he says. "There was no reason for you to wait seven years."

He wraps her scarf around her neck, adjusting it to perch perfectly atop her shoulders, loose enough for her to tuck her chin into. Finally, he fixes her half-fallen hat and then reaches under her hair to release it from underneath all the winter fabric. Her scarlet tresses falls over her thick purple overcoat, catching a few snowflakes.

Beautiful.

She looks worriedly at him. "Jellal, don't feel bad about being gone for so long," she says, reaching out to hold his hand between both of hers. "You're here now. With me." She looks up at him again, giving him a warm smile — so warm that it cuts the chilly winter air on his cheeks.

She's right, he realizes. She always has been.

He slides his hand out of her grip and pulls her — her entire bundle of winter clothing — close to him, a wide grin on his face.

"Oh no, I don't feel bad about _that_ ," he jokes, kissing her nose. "I only regret I haven't been here to help you properly put on a scarf. To think of all those times your poor scarf has fallen into the snow!"

"Jellal," she snorts, pulling away from him forcibly and turning around to continue their walk down the street.

She turns her head to give him a cheeky smile.

"And to think all those times your poor tie has had to be done and redone over and over again," she retorts, sticking her tongue at him.

"Well," he replies, taking wide strides to catch up with her, looping his arm with hers. "At least _you're_ here now — with me."

* * *

 **thir13enth**


	5. by the years

**by the years**

summary: cold winters, warm memories.  
prompt: snowflakes

.

Winter has never been the same — and like every single snowflake that falls to the ground, there's always a little something special, a little something unique that marks one year's winter different from all of the rest.

Her first winter she ever remembered, she made snowmen with her friends at the playgrounds at the Fairy Tail Children's Home.

Master Makarov was the best at making pot roast for the holidays, and somehow through a combination of his wisdom, good spices, and having eaten his food for long enough, Erza still yearns to eat a meal that surpassed Makarov's holiday dishes. Jellal is a very good cook — perhaps half the reason why she loved in the first place — but his food, while delicious, isn't the same as Makarov's slow-cooked stews, and to this day, even after compiling everything that Mira, Lucy Natsu, Gray, and her remembered about the master's recipes, she still can't seem to get it right.

Her tenth winter, she met her mother for the first time, and she discovered that her mother was lonely and broken and distrustful of the rest of the world.

Her mother told her the story of how she came to be, and why she could neither stand to see her nor stand to kill her. Erza cried and cried and cried for the rest of that night and for the remainder of the nights that week, but she had a good home, a good foster family, and a good new friend from school, who had strange blue hair and an even stranger tattoo under his right eye, to embrace her in silence when she needed.

Her eighteenth winter, she went on a week-long road trip with that very blue-haired boy — now her best friend Jellal — for seven full days with no destination in mind and only a desire for time with him, not distance.

Around day three, while sharing the same motel bed with a not-so-clever-after-all excuse to save extra money, she brings herself close to him to ask for him to share some warmth. They end up sharing confessions and a few kisses instead.

Her twenty-second winter, she doesn't remember anything at all except for the few moments just before Jellal asked her to marry him.

It must have been an otherwise unimpressive night — or maybe a night he did such a perfect job that she wouldn't have suspected anything in the first place — because she only begins to recall when she was holding his hand, pulling him through the busy sidewalks to get home as soon as possible. He pretended to slip and fall on the ice, and when she turned around, she found him on one knee and holding a small diamond ring.

Last winter, she spent at home with her four-year-old boy while Jellal went out of the country for the season to help his sister to take care of a dying great-aunt as she passed.

Jellal's absence was tragic for the child, who had never seen his father gone for more than a few days at a time on business trips, but by the beginning of the new year and after many many movies and bedtime stories, there were plenty of inside jokes and new made-up words shared between her son and her — ones that even to this day, Jellal still doesn't know the meaning of.

And this winter?

This winter, they're taking their newborn daughter out for her first winter, opting for a short walk around the neighborhood park just a street down their apartment.

Of course, the baby isn't awake to see the fresh snowfall. She's asleep, bundled up snug and warm into a dark red bundle within her proud father's arms. Her eyes are closed, her cheeks are flushed pink, and her small hands are gently curled into a loose fist by her chin. There's a clear trail of drool at the edge of her lips, and every now and then a small bubble of spit pops inside her mouth.

Jellal chuckles softly at this.

"I'm beginning to think she's gotten all her genes from you," he remarks, lowering his arms a little so that Erza could see. "She drools in her sleep, too."

"She's a baby!" Erza says, giggling. "And I do _not_ drool."

Jellal gives her a look.

Her toddler son points at her. "Yeah, you do!" he shouts at her. "Daddy and me took a picture of you when you were napping once!"

She snorts at both of them. "Okay, if there's one thing that I'll admit to doing while sleeping, it's snoring."

"Yeah, you _snore_ ," her son affirms.

Jellal chuckles before looking up to the sky to think for just an emphasized moment. "Well, now that you mention it, _she_ snores, too," he adds, eyes back on Erza.

"She does?" Erza asks, a little surprised.

"You're a much heavier sleeper," Jellal reminds her, shifting the baby's weight to his right arm so that he could bring her into a brief side embrace. He nuzzles her temple with his lips, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. "I probably take care of it before you even realize."

"Heavy sleeper! Heavy sleeper!" her son repeats ecstatically, bouncing ahead of them in pace.

She sighs, reaching out for her toddler's hand before he gets too far ahead of the two of them.

"She even has my hair," she reflects, watching the light snow fall on the baby's tuft of scarlet on top.

"Indeed," Jellal agrees.

"Well, I suppose the baby's going to end up just like me," she says, dryly, rolling her eyes.

"She'll be perfect then, too," he murmurs, pressing a kiss to her cheek.

* * *

 **thir13enth**


	6. building a family

**building a family**

summary: snow isn't always the best medium. sometimes it is.  
prompt: snowmen

.

Making a snowcat was harder than Jellal thought it would be.

After more than forty minutes of making four perfectly shaped and sized cylinders for legs that were probably too thick for a snow sculpture cat (especially in representing their cat, Scrubs), Jellal attempted to balance a long oval-shaped snow chunk onto the four legs to create some sort of a body. He squatted, slowly and steadily transferring the weight from the snowcat's body to its legs.

Finally, once he felt ready to let gravity determine fate, he let go, standing up and backing his hands away from the entire structure.

And by some sheer miracle, the entire thing stayed.

He sighed in relief, stretching out his back — having been hunched over and shaping snow for a long while now. He looked over at what Erza was working on.

"Ah," he remarked, seeing one snowperson — complete with two dark round pebbles for eyes, a leftover carrot from the refrigerator for the nose, and twigs for a smile — about a meter away from his half-done cat. "You finished one already."

"Mhm!" she affirmed, rolling yet another large snow base next her snowman. "And I'm making a second to go right next to it."

He smiled. He loved seeing her so focused on her work. Erza was capable of doing anything that she put her mind to. Her determination would stop at nothing.

"So is this one me?" he asked her, gesturing toward the completed snowman before scooping a clump of snow into his hands. He squints, thinking that he sees some finger-made etchings in the snowman under its right eye.

"Yeah," she replied, smiling cheekily. "I couldn't really get your tattoo exactly right. It was too complicated for the snow. Sorry."

Jellal shrugged, indifferent. "I'm not doing so great with our cat."

Erza looks over at his creation. "I don't think Scrubs would mind," she laughed.

"I suppose the snow family on the front lawn will never actually perfectly portray the real family living inside the actual house," he agreed.

"We always have next winter," Erza reminded him.

"Indeed."

Jellal kneeled back down to the ground, picking a still snow-heavy patch on the grass to roll his starter snowball in. After packing the snowball down to the size he wanted, as proper for a snowcat head, he walked back to his half-complete cat, settling the head on top of the torso toward the end. He rotated the head back and forth a bit, grinding the snow together to keep both pieces together. Once secure, Jellal added two clumps of snow on top of the head to make ears.

"There!" he declared, getting up and brushing the excess snow off his gloves.

He looked over at Erza's work — now next to the snowman him is a complete snowman her.

"Adding something to yourself?" he called out to her, spotting her scoop up another ball of snow.

She didn't reply, just rolling along another smaller ball up next to the two snowpeople.

He laughed. "I know my snowcat is bad. Are you redo-ing for me?" he asked.

She looked up at him with a big smile.

"Nope," she answered. She picked up a smaller ball of snow, set aside from before, and plopped it onto the larger ball.

"Then what are you —" He interrupted himself to think for a moment. "Another person?"

She paused, her smile growing wider. "Yes," she replied.

He furrowed his eyebrows. "Who?"

She shook her head, not giving him the answer.

"Who?" he asked again. "In our family? Another —"

 _Oh._

 _Wait —_

"I'm pregnant, Jellal," she announced, hearing his sudden silence and seeing his widening eyes.

"E-Erza!" he exclaimed, dropping everything and coming toward her to bundle her up into a deep embrace. Unable to control the happiness welling inside of him, he lifted her up off the ground and spun her around a couple of times.

She laughed. "Put me down!"

"Erza," he said, standing her back onto the ground and pressing his lips onto her forehead. "Erza…"

"I was going to wait until later to tell you," she explained, out of breath with excitement. "But I thought this might have been a better way."

"You shouldn't have waited _at all_ ," he jokingly admonished her. He kissed her again, this time on the nose. "You should have told me once you found out!"

"I think you might have been driving at the time," Erza teased.

Jellal gave himself a brief moment to calm down, looking deep into her eyes.

And all he saw was Erza. Erza and him. Erza and him and their cat and their child. Erza and him.

He took a breath and then smiled.

"We're going to _parents_ , Erza," he said. "You and I. _Parents_."

"Yeah," she said, a blush forming over her face and her smile widening over her lips. " _Parents_."

* * *

 **thir13enth**


	7. inconvenience

**"inconvenience"**

summary: oh the weather outside is frightful.  
prompt: blizzard

.

When they wake up in the morning to the howl of the wind outside, they don't even have to draw the curtains to know that Jellal is not going to be leaving for the airport anytime soon.

"I should _at least_ check to make sure anyway," he mumbles into the back of her neck, his nose nuzzling through her hair.

She groans, not bothering to open her eyes. She feels around for her phone blindly instead — dropped somewhere between the pillows and the sheets. Eventually she finds it and then passes it over her shoulder to him, tapping it once onto his skin.

She feels his hand lift from her waist, coming up from under the covers to take the phone from her hand. She keeps her eyes shut as she hears him unlock the phone — he lets out a little moan when the bright screen hits his sleep-washed eyes — and go online to check the flight status.

After a minute, he takes a deep breath in and sighs. She hears the plop of her phone on the pillow behind his head, feels his hand come back to her hips.

"Delayed?" she murmurs, her voice cracking from disuse.

"This flight is delayed due to severe weather conditions," he recites. "We apologize for any inconveniences."

She laughs. "Nothing to be sorry about."

He kisses her shoulder. "I guess I won't be going anywhere this morning."

"Good," she says, and then with a sneaky smile, adds, "But now that we're both awake…" She reaches down for his free hand, and then guides him to her breast. "I suppose we can use this time doing _whatever_ we please."

She hears him chuckle.

"And whatever do you mean by _whatever we please_?"

"Take a guess."

"Won't have to," he growls, his lips moving down her back, his hand squeezing.

Usually Jellal was caught in storms on the _other_ side of the flight on his way home — and that was always terrible. The absolute worst part of being married to a traveling businessman.

But now, seeing the heavy blizzard going on outside, no sign of the snow letting up, with Jellal on _this_ side of the flight and with him stuck in bed with her — she thinks that storms aren't too bad after all.

* * *

 **thir13enth**


	8. at last

**at last**

summary: he is her best medicine.  
prompt: blankets by the fireplace

.

Some nights she can't sleep.

She can't really explain it. The nightmares started ever since her firstborn son, and whoever knows why, because he is the greatest gift that she never expected to desire. Once the sun goes down, she tries to get to bed as soon as possible. She tries to encourage her eyes to shut, her mind to quiet, her breath to soften, but sometimes sleeping — and _keeping_ asleep — proves to be the most difficult thing to do in a day.

She doesn't have an explanation. She's not scared, and she doesn't think she's anxious. And bad dreams stopped haunting her mind ever since Jellal came back from the war, safe and sound.

In fact, she doesn't even know if these _are_ dreams. There's no people, no sounds — just colors of shapes that she never remembers upon waking, but nevertheless leave a sour and acrid taste on her mouth.

Tonight she gets out of bed again at midnight. She doesn't wake up because she never fell asleep.

After two hours and eighteen minutes of staring and waiting for the red digital numbers on the clock on the nightstand tick by, she gives up. Erza isn't a quitter, but she also hates wasting time, and she knows there are more efficient ways of getting herself to sleep than trying to do so alone.

She steps down the stairs to the living room. Slowly, her husband's figure comes into sight — peaceful, wearing a dark green sweater, reading a book with his back propped against the coffee table, cross-legged sitting on the fluffy rug by the couch, a thick blanket draped over his legs.

The fireplace makes the edges of his blue hair shine a soft yellow-white, makes his face glow amber. The shadows of the fire flicker over jaw, the small smile over his lips that forms when he hears her bare feet on the wood floor pad toward him.

"Couldn't sleep?" he asks her.

She looks up at the family photos on the wall behind him — one of when they were married, one of him throwing up their baby son into the air and her scared shitless watching him do so, and the center one — the largest —of the two of them embracing, their son between them.

He turns around to see what she's gazing at.

"I've tucked him in for the night," he tells her. "We didn't even get through one page of Fairy Tail before he dropped to sleep."

She laughs softly, glancing once more at the photos before she kneels down next to him, leaning into his shoulders. "I wish I could still do that."

He frowns. "I'm sorry nothing's worked."

She pecks him on the cheek before she slips herself under the blanket, stretching herself out on the rug and resting her head on his lap. "It's fine," she tells him. "Everyone says to try this or that, take this or that, but I think what works best is just cuddling up next to you."

"Let me read to you, too," he suggests, with a light chuckle. "Apparently that helped our son."

"Mhm…" she agrees, letting the warm of the fireplace, the warm of the blanket, the warm of his body envelop her.

And so he starts to read — something about nebulas and stars and the ionized gas components that were common between them — things that Erza doesn't really try to understand but she listens anyway and lets her eyes go shut, her mind to quiet, her breath to soften.

She doesn't need his voice to soothe her to sleep. His hand running through her hair, his fingers loosening the tangled waves, is more than enough.

* * *

 **thir13enth**


End file.
